[LostTribe]

maybe a nice uplifting DJ short F13 would help you out. Nice fun and happy high. Where is that giggly shit we used to get aka the mexibrick?

Could be worse you could be stuck with mexibrick!

Keep your head up.

[hermdog]

A little update since ICmag feels like home.
This whole thread started on my realization of having bipolar, the coming to god moment I had a page in was after a night where I took some otc cough syrup for a bad cough.

I don't know if it had dxm in it, but it was part alcohol.
Long story short, I don't drink alcohol, especially while manic.
For as long as I can remember I've gotten visuals if I don't get as much rest and food as I exhaust. Usually it makes patterns wavy like taking psychedelics, at night it's mandalas covering my vision.
That going on plus alcohol, stimulants, or anything that doesn't sedate the mind and my illness goes from benign to a bad trip.

Hell, I've never had a bad visual trip until that night.
Maybe I was lucky in the past and always took psychedelics in the right mood.
I actually believe mushrooms cured my depression, It's just I only realized I've been manic for a string of months, my old ways of self care and proper eating are a lot different when I'm racing instead of getting along at the comfortably depressed pace.

I'm getting a lot done and much more consistently now that I know to eat a lot more, burn my racing energy on meaningful shit and my sleep comes easy. Sleeping 8 hours a night consistently while manic is something I never figured out til now.


Some medicinal experiences from strains recently...
Tahoe OG is still my best day med, slows my thoughts enough to where I don't speak or move rapidly, but isn't dumbing in anyway.
Forum cut cookies is most definitely anti anxiety, except I'm not experiencing anxiety, the mental effect pulls my many trains of thoughts into one and focuses harder. (which is what anti-anxiety drugs do.)
Overdoing forum has given me racing trips down singular thought paths, that's also something hazes or other sativas do to me, which is why I avoid them unless I'm ready to blast off.

I feel excited to keep figuring out how to keep my mind and body running at optimum levels. to me bipolar highlights life's system of puzzles that when figured out become gifts.
Intense mania is like living day to day on meth, deep depression is very much the inward learning experience psilocybin can be.
With schizophrenia added on I know that when I clearly hear another person's voice speaking through my inner voice I've let my depression deepen too far. Mania is the same but opposite, If I don't control it, I trip out.

That fun, giggly high is my everyday manic personality, so I'm smoking on the fuelly stuff, I know just the Mexi you speak of, LostTribe. Was my fav uplifting effect, even skunk 1 turns my visuals on now, just after one bowl.

[BakedBandit]

Edibles often make me sleepier than smoking. Not sure if they can/will help you with your situation. Just an idea tho

[hermdog]

Oh, for sure edibles are good for my insomnia, they just need to be mostly indica.
The edibles I've made with more sativa have been wild 4-24hr trips.
It is very strange being a daily smoker and always avoiding sativa, can't find anyone that will pass some kush around with me, still I always keep other strains around for my patients.

I wanted to bring somethings up about the differences I believe to be true in people with the different sides of bipolar. The people that grow to be comfortable living with mania but not depression, they're often the sativa and caffeine folks, if they move onto trying to maintain their energy with hard drugs, cocaine and meth. They often times have a fast paced lifestyle, coffee, some people around and work to do, they buzz through their day until a depression comes hard enough, or they have an emotional outburst or line of poor decision making. George Carlin was one of those types, Well spoken, reasonably intelligent, but strongly opinionated, Used cannabis to focus on writing and cocaine and speed to maintain the sort of energy he performed with, then died before life expectancy because his heart gave out.

Their opposites, depressed people that can't maintain a manic life, Hendrix, Cobain, There's millions of those that are creative and articulate away from all the energy. Those two used heroin to keep their racing in check, so many others fall into painkillers.
The answer I learned was a whole lot of good food, Indica, Sleep and pacing myself.

This illness is the crash test dumby course of human emotion.
Some let ego, greed, and paranoia run amok in their thoughts, some let the emotions of their depression do them in.
I think every emotion that comes to us can be harnessed through the decisions we make, for good, bad, or indifference.
All I seek is to use my energy for good things so I can try and make it to see my older years.

[Croissant]

hermdog,

It is great that some of the strains like Tahoe and cookies work well for you. The thing is if it is antianxiety traits in cannabis you week there are much better strains. I know it isn't available now but deep chunk is one of the best. The DJshorts blue family has some real winners in those lines also. Bubblegum big league chew bubblegum phenos are happy but not particularly anti anxiety. Also, yumboldt, although it would take a few packs and a phenol hunt. Other than those off the top of my head and from personal experience some of the high cbd strains really do the trick such as the strain harlequin although it is severely lacking in the high compared to the other mentioned strains.

Those strains might calm you when you are in acute manic state. Also, some of those meds might help when in acute manic state. The issue I have is taking those meds long term, they tend to have very serious side effects like dementia and addiction and they basically just zombify you.

I know it is expensive but really a talk therapist or analyst who is not trying to coerce or zombify you but assist you dig through your unconscious is the way to go. I advise to stay away from the cognitive behaviorists, as those traditions are essentially just coericing you to identify with neoliberal ideology and masking it in eastern spirituality ie. "mindfulness."

Without doing the work that is done in analysis of discovering patterns within your unconscious you will essentially just be stuck in a constant battle of self management to conform to an ideal you feel guilty for not living up to. That is a particular kind of hell in itself.

[Weird]

I am hoping to get one of the strains I run tested so I can see what is in the profile that has satiated my mind.

on a different note

Almost all dogma and philosophy has exoteric and esoteric metaphors that illuminate the shared nature of our existence.

Obsessively thinking about the underlying patterns within them all is one of the ways my mania expresses itself, reconciling them to logic a trespass that exist beyond by disease was a positive consequence that allows me to remain rational regardless.

My disease is not diminished, just the payload.

A sick society effects one layer of our "filters" and mental illness another. Because they overlap it is easy to confuse one for the other. Mental illness presents challenges that require we step outside the paradigm of mainstream societal expectation, something that can actually transform people. Problem one still lies outside the mainstream albiet ahead of it.

[hermdog]

Nah, I've not felt anxiety in months, paranoia I have.
You know what you're talking, Croissant.
I consider paranoia to be anxieties polar cousin.
Stuff like getting in a panic about a hovering helo over my house, even though I'm legal was my last fit of paranoia.

I'm really poor though, bud.
I am seeing doctors and other professionals but at a ridiculously slow pace because of their appointment scheduling.
Every day I understand things a little better.
When someone told me about getting my life back I thought, I can't say I've ever had control until I began to identify my abnormal behavior and emotions.
Emotion by emotion I'm honing the person I want to be and in that feel like a whole man for the first time.
That bad trip threw a wrench in my spokes but it's understood and now I know better how to avoid them.

I feel it's not figuring out patterns in the unconscious, I think it's possible we use both mindsets in our decision making. The key is, how well are you calling the shots in both your conscious and subconscious thought.

I can tell you this from experience, depression is the domain of the self reflecting back. The nagging negative thoughts in depression are inner reminders that you aren't living to your potential.
I'm not embarrassed to say I lived without friends from 18-23, in the time spent alone I carefully listened to my personal shortcomings as told to me by my subconscious.
The ego doesn't venture that deep into the mind.

This is the reason why during depression a mushroom trip feels spiritual as if you've come back with new information on how to live life, deep thought without an interfering ego is possible in a state where you think from the subconscious rather than the 'awake' mind. I believe finding and creating inner peace while depressed is clear thought, devoid of ego.

I've been to the brink of both ends and now my paths in life are brighter. I've had a handful of depressed days over the last few months, the only noticeable effects were the day just seemed longer and my mind's thoughts stop interrupting my attention span.
I wish I could hammer this point home with everybody lost in this struggle, neither depression or mania is the enemy when you figure out how to make a peaceful home for yourself in each.

[Croissant]

herm

I am really sorry about your financial difficulties. Some therapists have a sliding scale though. Shit, grow a little extra to afford it if possible.

I just highly advise to stay away from the 'self care' 'rational' 'cognitive behavioral' and 'positive psychology' models. The ideas from those models are pretty common place in the English speaking world largely because they are consistent with neoliberal ideology and their founders wrote a bigillian self help books. The appeal of those models is they promise to work quickly and claim to be scientific but eugenics claimed to be scientific also. They essentially work by holding someone else in contempt you feel superior to I mean it works but someone somewhere else bears that burdain which I find highly unethical. It is basically prejudice with a tendency towards inverted racism fetishizing elements of eastern spirituality.

Anyway, be carefull with the self help field man it is chock full of charletans.

[Weird]

CBT is evidence based therapy something you promoted in another thread. It works well for people I know with specific disorders.

It is limiting for others to pigeon hole any treatment methodologies you don't fully understand.

If we where to take a "social" disease like alcoholism and look at the self help model we know two things, 1) It can be effective but 2) for a limited percentage of alcoholics

Does that mean all other alcoholics are doomed to be alcoholics? Or does that simply illustrate that specific treatments works for specific segments of the population?

Self help and self help organizations can be life saving and life transforming but just like the varying therapies and medicines, not everyone is going to get the same mileage from the same treatments.

Here is my suggestion for anyone suffering from bipolar.

Discover your baseline, the place where you can find a relative emotional baseline that mirrors the mainstream. You may choose not to sustain this place or not but it is necessary to find a baseline. I can discuss this in more detail.

Exhaust all natural methods for maintaining a baseline that will help you thrive in your environment, you may find your environment is too overwhelming for balance, this information will be very helpful to make further adjustments to your geography and lifestyle to help you find a place that helps you maintain homeostasis.

Parallels to this you need to learn to do two things:

1) disengage the thought processes and emotions (I know very difficult)

2) Set logical barometers and challenge your emotion by questioning it with logic.

You have to learn to sense the triggers that inflate your emotion before it effects thinking so much it becomes over bearing and you are unable to execute #1. You can then approach the issue using logic. You may need to have people close to you cognitive of the situation so they can help you through the process.

I have a friend who is bipolar and would have anxiety driven attacks that would make him pass out. Many people felt uncomfortable being around him but I talked to him about it, what he felt at the time and what he was thinking during the moments that led up to it.

The bottom line is, after he came to realize what thoughts and stimulus where triggering this and that it was a "misfiring" of his nervous/glandular system he was able to slowly take control over. Now it no longer happens.

Therapy, substance and people around you that care enough and understand the phenomenon well enough certainly help bridge the gap.

[Weird]

One of the issues I found with bipolar support groups is the ignorance regarding marijuana and other substances, although it seems the groups and mental health professionals are starting ot become a bit more pporgressive